SANDWICH ISLANDS. 
141 
places the path consists of little more than holes cut in the 
rock for the hands and feet; and, where most commodious, it 
lies along narrow ledges, where a false step would be inevitable 
destruction. Down this steep a whole army was driven by 
Tamehameha, at the conquest of the Island; and there his 
victory ended, for no one survived to oppose him. Before 
this path, such as it is, was practised, the communication 
between the two sides of the Island was carried on at an¬ 
other place, where the road is shorter, but where both sides 
are equally precipitous; and there being no possibility of 
climbing them, ladders of coiar-rope * were used. At the 
bottom of the Parre there are two large stones, on which, 
even now, offerings of flowers and fruit are laid to propitiate 
the Akua Wahini, or goddesses, who are supposed to have 
the power of granting a safe passage. In a valley near this 
wonderful precipice there is a fall of w T ater of between two 
and three hundred feet. There the herbage is luxuriant 
even to rankness; and the mighty fragments of rock that 
are scattered around, and along the water-course, form 
caverns and dark places which superstition has assigned for 
the abode of a man-devouring deity, called Akua moo, or the 
reptile god; and if there had been large snakes or alligators 
on the Island, we should have no difficulty in accounting 
* Rope made of cocoa-nut husk. 
